Amityville: It's About Time -- 1992 -- R

This is actually the sixth film in the Amityville saga. I'm unable to watch the 4th and 5th films because they aren't out on video, but from what I've been able to gather, I haven't missed much, and this one works pretty much on its own. Let's face it, the demonic possession is the star here, and we have that, so on we go.

This installment involves a place far, far removed from Amityville itself. A guy comes home after working in Amityville on a housing project. With him, he brings a clock that appears to be an antique, and he says it's just what their new house needs. The clock was apparently part of the original Amityville house and as such, is possessed. Its presence causes all kinds of weirdness to go on before people start dropping dead. Of course, you have the weird neighbor who just happens to have all the right occult books that show pictures of the clock and the original amityville house and a picture of the very room that the clock was in so we could get that relationship. And of course, the people who know all about it are the first to either die or disappear so they can't warn anyone else.

The characters here exist to service the plot. There's very little to any of them so it's difficult to make any kind of connection. The weirdness is weird for the sake of being weird; it has very little correlation to the overall story in most cases. The black goo that was introduced in 3-D appears to be a very prevalent feature now. In 1 & 2, it wasn't black goo; it was blood.

In this one, they had the daughter become overly sexual in response to the demon possessed clock (you figure out the relationship there). What was her one sexual act? Seducing the boy she'd been seeing into the basement by removing her skimpy clothing...and waiting for him in her stock bra and oversized granny panties...huh? One would think we would be in for lingerie based on the way she was dressed before, but I guess she wouldn't have any? I dunno. It was pretty weird.

The plot was not complicated at all. Bring in weird clock. Clock does weird things. There's not much to know about continuity or anything else in this one. It's just a thin plot line of "figure it out or survive it" for those involved. But the hardest part is figuring out a way to end it that is satisfying and sensible. Hm...

I saw the ultimate ending coming some time before we got there. You deal with time, you occasionally get endings like this one. Not too spectacular, but not too bad either. Inevitable really.

So after it all, the movie isn't bad. It's kind of a stock horror flick with quite a few cliches and conventions we've come to expect from a film of the genre. I do appreciate that they took a bit of a different direction with the franchise than just another haunted house movie. Possessed items are nothing new, but I supposed it kept the fans satisfied in the age of horror sequels.

To put this in perspective, at this time, Nightmare on Elm Street had just come out with their 6th, Friday the 13th with their 7th, and Halloween's most recent was the 5th. Amityville was working hard to keep up, but theirs were direct to video releases.